Reflections of consciousness: The mirror test

Humans and some animals are able to recognize themselves in a mirror. This ability has been taken as a demonstration of self-consciousness. Consequently, it has been proposed that the self-recognition in the mirror image, the mirror test, could also be used to determine the potential self-consciousness of cognitive machines. It is shown that very simple machinery is able to pass the mirror test and consequently it is argued that the passing of the mirror test per se does not demonstrate the existence of self-consciousness. Next, the realization of more complex machinery that passes the mirror test and could be considered to possess self-consciousness is outlined